The article hits all the points – it’s to the point, makes great observations, and is designed to spark a debate (which it has done incredibly well online). It’s exactly the type of opinion piece that any editor would be desperate to pick up and publish.
And yet, it’s increasingly difficult to find any type of content published in the Gulf’s media which doesn’t adhere to an official government position. Be it censorship or self-censorship, the outcome is the same. There’s no discussion of ideas, no debate on how to progress. As one friend put it, the media is the last place anyone in the Gulf should go to if they want to debate how the region can make any progress.
Open debate is essential for any society to move forward. It’s not always pretty, but airing thoughts in public helps to drive discussion around different ideas and points of view. Societies which promote this type of openness promote innovation. And yet we’re not benefiting.
Don’t take it from me. Read below the tweet of the UAE’s Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdulla about why this discussion should be had. I hope we’ll be able to do that, not on social media or on a blog from an institution thousands of miles away. But rather here on the ground, where it matters most. Let’s hope a push from more of us will give the region’s editors the bravery to run more pieces like Mira’s.
تغريدة بنت #الإمارات ميرا التي تعد أطروحة دكتوراه بجامعة كامبريدج العريقة في بريطانيا تستحق اهتمام من يهمه الأمر وتستدعي النظر في حال اقلام اماراتية عديدة تضطر للهجرة إلى الخارج للتعبير عن رأيها بجرأة. كيف نستعد ل 50 سنةً القادمة وهذا وضع حرية الصحافة في الإمارات @miraalhusseinhttps://t.co/Zqn8r6vCAe
You may know the PESO model, but do you use the O element?
Whoever is in charge of bringing more media investments to Dubai, may luck be on their side. It’s drier out there than a summer spent in the Sahara. The media is suffering. I’ve had some brilliant journalists approach me recently asking about a move to public relations (and even cynical old me has been taken aback by these asks), as they’re under so much pressure from others, be it sales or management, that they feel they can’t do their jobs. And then there’s the difficulty in getting a good story published; more and more, if you’re not advertising, you’re not getting coverage (unless you’re the government).
I truly get this; media outlets need to make money and I have countless conversations with marketing teams as to why this matters and why they should put money into local publications (often the response is, we’re paying the PR agency and so we should get coverage – this drives me nuts and reflects one of the many misunderstandings of how PR and media works).
Let’s be straight. The number of media outlets reporting straight news is dropping. And those working in communications for brands need to have a Plan B. So, what’s your Plan B? How are you getting out your message?
We all know about social media, and there’s always the option to boost messaging using advertising (especially on the social media sites). But I’m still surprised by how few organizations here, especially local brands, are using their owned media to get out their messaging.
I’m not going to go into too much detail, but there’s so many audio choices – think podcasts and audio chat rooms like Clubhouse and TwitterSpaces – and there’s the “traditional” option of a blog page. Blogs like this one can be done for next to no costs and technical expertise, and they can be used to build up a long-term audience through email signups and social media. If you want to, you can start off by posting articles to LinkedIn (though I’d always recommend your own site for SEO purposes). And there’s also vlogs, video blogs, which is how many “social media influencers” started out.
And then there’s your own influencers, namely your employees. I’ve often found them to be brilliant at pushing out your company’s news on their own social media feeds. There are tools to push out content to them, such as LinkedIn Pulse or Sprinklr. But you don’t need an app – you could even push to them content via email and incentivize their posting.
Technology is making it much, much easier for organizations to create their own channels to push out content. Yes, the media matters a great deal. But smart communicators need to think about what they can do to create new channels for pushing out good messaging and content. What I’ve listed above is just a sampling of what you can do with the owned media element of the PESO model. And I can’t wait to see what you come up with. As always, please do share ideas. The more we share, the better we all get.
We’re a couple of days out from International Women’s Day, the time of year when we all look to gender equality. But I want to get the conversation started now, and on a different issue. A couple of events have gotten me thinking about the issue how women are treated in the media and marketing sectors in our region.
The first was a very brave article by former journalist Reem Abdellatif. Reem is no longer based in the Gulf (and I’ll get to why this is important in a minute) and she penned an op-ed on sexual harassment and assault for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper (if you’re not subscribed to Haaretz, you should be – often the reporting on the Gulf is better than what you’ll see from newspapers in the Gulf).
Reem’s piece is both general and personal, and Reem details her own stories of abuse. Chillingly, she describes one experience of an uninvited sexual proposition by a journalist in Dubai. It’s a story I feel many women here will be able to relate to. I’m sharing a specific piece from that story below.
Some of you may have noticed that I referred to Reem as having been based in the Gulf. She wouldn’t have been able to publish this account if she were still based here. And no media outlet would carry it, even if she weren’t based here. This is due to the region’s defamation laws, which are criminal offenses. And that brings me to my second reminder. Which I can’t even talk about, despite the seriousness of the sexual harassment allegations being made and the fact that everyone would know the organization.
And that for me is the core of the issue. In the Gulf, we can’t talk about sexual harassment, except in broad brushstrokes which have less meaning. The perpetrators get off, scot free, with little impact on their careers or their reputations. While the victims have to live with the abuse for the remainder of their lives.
If the media and marketing industry is serious about tackling gender equality, they’ve got to start with this. And that doesn’t mean making a statement about the issue of gender equality in the company, talking about the need for purpose in communications or bringing in a female head for a couple of years. Rather, it means rooting out the issue of abuse and harassment. What we have to do must include:
Trainings on sexual harassment and gender bias at the workplace, for all staff (most especially management);
Proper investigations into sexual harassment allegations, including with the authorities – these are criminal offenses, and should be treated as such, and
Anyone found guilty of sexual harassment should be blacklisted from agency groups, and future employers should specifically ask about this question when asking for references.
These are the basic steps the industry must take to address the issue. For all the talk about equality and opportunity, if women don’t feel safe in our industry then we’re not going to make any progress on these other issues. Who’s with me?
This week, I’m doing something a little different. I had the pleasure of being joined by the Middle East’s leading legal light (try saying that ten times) on all things media related. Fiona Robertson speaks about influencers, media laws, what some hotel brands were doing during 2020, and why communicators should be vetting what goes online. Have a listen, and follow Fiona on her Linkedin page.
For anyone who has any sense of perspective and basic awareness about what we’ve lived through over the preceding 10 months, it was pretty clear what would happen to Covid cases over the holiday period. Increased social activity, inbound tourism and generally more latitude to enable both led to an increase in positive cases. It was entirely predictable.
And yet, I’m genuinely confused. There have been very few voices criticising social media “influencers” for their behaviour while on their “essential business” trips to the country. For me, there hasn’t been enough focus on the messaging that we are “all in it together” and should, as a result, take the necessary precautions to safeguard one another. And there’s been precious little commentary on lessons learned.
Instead, as the numbers continued to climb, we all looked towards the media and their “irresponsible wording”.
I’m just as critical as anyone of the media; that’s the legacy of my journalistic past – to criticise what others write far too freely. However, it’s folly to lay the blame at the feet of the witness.
I’ve read so many hot takes this week about what has been reported on Dubai and the UAE by the international media: the foreign journalists don’t know us (despite many of them having lived for years here and writing some of the best reporting on the country); we’re doing better than others (I’m sorry, but we’re not New Zealand or South Korea), and “we know best”, which is the new “if you don’t like it, you can leave” argument.
Can anyone say, with any sense of self-respect, that the foreign media is to blame for what’s going on? If they’re not, why do we then attack them for what they write about what has happened over the end-of-year period? Which is, in effect, what all of us saw, either face-to-face or on our social media timelines? And, for those accusing them of this, where were you a month ago when all of this was unfolding?
The value of hard truths
I believe that hard truths are often better for us than being told what we want to hear. The reporting about the case numbers and the reasons behind their rise has acted as a wake-up call for many. It’s focused us all on what we need to do to keep people safe and led the authorities to take steps that’ll stop the spread of the disease. And for that, I’m thankful.
Instead of attacking some media outlets for asking difficult questions – which is, in fact, their job – why aren’t we asking ourselves about the importance of both accountability and tolerance? Across the world over, the media have done some of their most important work in asking why we have responded the way we have. They’ve spoken to the medical experts and they’ve communicated in plain language what we all need to understand, often better than others.
I’d go even farther and say that the best media has helped to save lives. I for one am grateful for the media’s work in 2020, for the reporting and coverage that have helped people truly understand what we are up against. And I expect the same of them in 2021.
For all of our sakes, they should keep on asking hard questions.
This isn’t new. Other websites in the region follow a similar model. You pay your amount, and the news gets published online. The reasons why they’re doing this are sadly obvious. This year has been the worst on record for ad revenues for traditional publishers. Print has been decimated; the pandemic stopped the print runs for a time, and, once printing resumed, sales dropped. Online traffic has surged, but digital ad sales haven’t kept up. Publishers need the revenues.
I support the media, and I understand how they’re looking at any opportunity to find new revenue streams. But this issue raises so many questions. Here’s just a few.
1. Who defines what is newsworthy when money controls printing? Is there any editorial oversight or actual editing? And if there is, how does this factor into the whole process? Press releases in the region aren’t exactly breaking news, and will more likely send a reader to sleep than get them excited.
2. Who pays? Are some, such as government, exempt? Will SMEs get a pass/discount? Or will we see corporates and their budgets dominate the news?
3. Will Google/other aggregators downgrade the publisher’s websites? Or will reader traffic drop off? Either one would severely impact why any organization would want their news to be published on the site.
4. Who is responsible for inaccuracies? Are corporate press releases being checked for veracity by the editorial team? If they are, do inaccuracies get called out?
5. Finally, the issue of reader trust. If someone wants to place a paid news insertion into a publication, they’re usually given advertorial. And that space is marked clearly as advertorial. Will publishers clearly mark when content is paid for?
6. And the big question, what does this mean for PR agencies? Why should a client hire an agency to pitch if publication is guaranteed by money? You may say content generation, but algorithms are increasingly being used to write stories. Where does the agency add value?
I have other questions about this concept. Frankly, it concerns me. I’d rather publishers invest in good content and charge subscription rates. Or monetize their database. Even tax social media firms and push those revenues into editorial. Or anything that isn’t a pay-to-publish model.
One of the perks of this job is being able to pitch a great story and working with smart journalists who have an eye for a story, no matter who they’re talking with. With editors and journalists being cut, is this the future of publishing? Will your share of voice be determined by how much money you have to pay for publishing? I hope this is not the case.
Arabian Business will set up a paywall from the end of June, with a US$5.99 unlimited subscription model. Should others follow suit? (image source: http://www.whatsnewsinpublishing.com)
Paywalls – the notion of having to pay a monthly subscription to access news online – has long been a contentious issue, for publishers, journalists, and the public. However, paywalls and the online paid subscription model have worked; just look at the New York Times, which has arguably been saved by the paywall it introduced just under a decade back.
The old model of print media has been declining for years. And the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the process. What we hadn’t seen was any attempt to bring the paywall model to the Gulf in any substantial way, to offset the losses that many publications are seeing, both from fewer people buying copies in-store, and from advertisers pulling marketing spend.
There’d long been talk of The National going digital only. And Gulf News journalists I know spoke of how the paper had also discussed putting up a paywall. However, it may be unsurprising that it’s a publication run by a private publisher which has taken the step of introducing a subscription fee for unlimited use of the website.
Announced yesterday via email to its subscribers, Arabian Business will be the first publication in the Gulf to put up a paywall. Here’s the text of their email message below.
Thank you for your support
Thank you for signing up on arabianbusiness.com and I trust you are benefiting from the news, insight and opinion that are available on the website, 24 hours a day.
The Covid-19 situation has certainly provided some challenges – but it has not stopped us. The editorial team continue to source, research and publish high quality, trustworthy content from the UAE and worldwide, keeping arabianbusiness.com as the number 1 site in the region.
The best content, local and international
Website users enjoy content on topics ranging from commerce to culture, construction to cars, property to politics, and sports to style.
You can read stories from the UAE and worldwide, brought to you in articles, interviews, videos and photography.
Learn more about the world’s most successful business leaders, the newest start-ups, multinational conglomerates and enterprises local to you. It’s all on the website, 24/7.
Improvements to the website from June 26th 2020
To further improve the quality and quantity of news we publish, the website is moving to a paywall model from June 26th 2020.
What does this mean? Everyone can read 5 articles a month, every month, for free. To enjoy unlimited access across the entire website will cost just $5.99/month.
Why? Making quality content available around the clock, to anyone wherever they are in the world, comes with a cost. To ensure Arabian Business can continue to provide the high quality, accurate, insightful, entertaining and useful features and news that you are used to, we are introducing this nominal charge.
What is included in the cost?
• Two months free trial – try it without risk. After that, it’s just $5.99 a month
• Unlimited access to the website, 24 hours a day
• Arabian Business digital magazine, every 2 weeks – delivered via app to your mobile or tablet
• Priority access to networking events, award ceremonies and conferences
And if you decide to cancel for any reason, you can.
How to sign up and enjoy unlimited access
Click the link below and follow the very simple two step procedure.
If you have any questions about the new paywall, or any other questions regarding Arabian Business, feel free to contact us on the above email and one of our team will get in touch.
I am sure you will continue to enjoy the content created by our team of correspondents in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the USA – and from 2021 we hope to extend our coverage into both Africa and South America.
— ArabianBusiness.com (@ArabianBusiness) May 26, 2020
The hope is that the subscription revenue stream will offset reduced ad spending in the short term. And longer-term, possibly make the publication less reliant on marketing budgets. This could be a very good outcome for two reasons. Firstly, publishers in the region often publish content their advertisers share with them (and sales people also push this message). The editorial teams will be less reliant on having to please advertisers with what is essentially advertorial copy. And second, it’ll enable the journalists to focus on news that readers want to see, namely more investigative journalism (which can also upset advertisers).
These are big ifs, and it’s going to take time to change established relationships between advertisers and publishers. But if a paywall leads to better journalism, I’m ready to put my money on the table and pay up. Given the number of journalists who are currently being let go of in the region (including, worryingly, at Arabic-language newspapers), it’s worth a shot. And I hope others follow the lead of Arabian Business, generate new revenues, and put that back into creating quality journalism that we all want to see.
The crisis is killing media outlets. And whilst it’s heartbreaking to watch, communicators must start thinking about what is next when it comes to engaging external audiences (image source: Medium)
The last month has been devastating for media globally. Despite the fact that most of us are glued to the news, scouring for bright spots amid all of the darkness about those who are suffering, ad revenues have tanked as print media has struggled to get out editions and advertisers have cut budgets to the bone. Digital isn’t faring that much better – too few have been able to pivot quickly enough to be able to offer firms what they’re looking for right now, namely lead generation services such as webinars and targeted database marketing.
The Middle East’s press is feeling this too. I’ve spoken with journalists who have been laid off, and I’ve seen LinkedIn posts from sales people who have been let go. For those who still have a job, publishers have cut back on working hours. As someone who spent years as a journalist, I have such respect for those in the trade; they work long hours, they’re dedicated to getting out the news, and they’re underpaid.
What also pains me is that there’s little many of us can do right now. Most companies are focused on the basics right now, and that includes cutting back costs to save money for operations, and investing money to help sales (and this basically means digital services).
We’ve got to be prepared for many media closures.
How do we adapt, given that so many of the publications we work with, god forbid, won’t be around once we start to re-open and re-adjust?
The answer will effectively be about owned media. Smart communicators will have already started to move towards focusing more on both creating and hosting content. For example, we’re going to see more company-branded blogs, podcasts, and videos (not all webinars, I hope). Communicators will move beyond social media to embrace longer-form content, and they’ll need to do it quickly too.
We’ll need to adapt to the changes with reskilling – we’ll need to be able to set up a WordPress site, understand how to edit audio and video, and record content remotely. We will also have to better understand the world of analytics, to better sense when content is working, how it is working, and what we need to do to tweak our work to improve our engagement with audiences that matter to us.
This will require us to rethink how we operate with fewer media outlets, and retraining will need to be primarily top-down (younger communicators are often more digitally-savvy than their superiors, which we all must acknowledge and address).
The one hope I have for many of my media friends is that they’ll find new roles as content creators in-house. It’s going to be an adjustment, but we need your writing, your videography, your editing and analytical skills.
I want to add one last note – if you are a journalist who is looking for something new, please do reach out to me and I’ll help review your CV and give you advice. In the meantime, stay well and stay safe.
This Ramadan’s media events will look a lot like this. What are you doing to adapt?
It’s the first couple of days of Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims. It’s a key time too for media relations, with a host of traditions that PR people and journalists follow when it comes to relationship building (to see what I’m talking about, have a look here).
This year is sadly different, given the lockdowns in place across much of the region. But work will continue, and we’ll have to adapt. Here’s a couple of ways you can turn the physical divide into an opportunity to do more online with journalists.
The Ramadan Gift
It’s traditional to share Ramadan gifts with journalists. This would traditionally be something food-related such as dates or chocolate, given that we are fasting all day. The good news is that e-commerce is still functioning, albeit with delivery delays. There is still a challenge however, in that many journalists are working from home rather than work. If you’re thinking of sending over a gift, drop the journalist an email asking for their address details for the purpose of sending a Ramadan gift. They’ll appreciate the gesture.
The Charity Donation
Given the situation facing many across the world right now, it may be a good idea to donate to charity on behalf of the journalists you work with. Ramadan is a time for supporting those in need, and many charities in the Middle East region (or anywhere right now) will allow you to give to charity on behalf of someone else. I’ve done this many times, and it’s always appreciated by the journalists I work with. Do let them know you’re doing this, and ask them if they have a specific charity or cause they’d like to be supported. Given that it’s easier than every to give online, this is a simple but effective way to build relations with journalists whilst also doing good.
The Media Iftar
It’s standard practice to invite a number of media to an Iftar, the meal which breaks the daily fast. This won’t be possible this year due to restaurant closures. Even if restaurants are open, many people may not feel comfortable gathering outside of their homes with non-family members. This is probably the hardest concept to replicate – connecting via teleconference just won’t cut it (I can only imagine the aggravation of having to shout at a screen “turn on the mic” five minutes before the breaking of the fast).
There are other ideas which may work – one could be to arrange food deliveries to the journalists in question (ensuring food deliveries turn up on time during a normal Ramadan is hard enough, and I can’t imagine how difficult it will be with the additional demand this year). Another idea may be for those die-hard enough to value media relations above all else, and that is to hand-deliver food to your journalist contacts. It sounds strange, but it will be appreciated, and it may even be an opportunity for those journalists you’re treating to share a couple of pics of their Iftar.
Zooming for Islam(or using digital content)
The final idea is pretty simple – it’s using digital channels to connect with your journalist contacts. Teleconferencing is awkward in this region at the best of times, and I can’t imagine how this is going to work for a social event (and I doubt anyone around here is using Houseparty). One alternative may be to keep the social interactions simpler, and instead use more digital content to share with your media contacts. What I do mean? It could be as simple as Ramadan and Eid greeting cards shared over WhatsApp or email, to filming yourself and your team sharing personalized Ramadan greetings and sharing these over messaging apps. You can get creative when it comes to the content you’re making, but just be careful of the channels you’re using; email is more formal, and best for when you don’t know the journalist too well, whereas WhatsApp should be used if you already have a good relationship with the journalist (it’s a pet peeve of many journalists here for them to be WhatsApped by PR people they don’t know, or don’t want to know, well).
These are just a couple of simple ideas for you. If you have any, please do share. And before I end, Ramadan Kareem to you all. It’s a very difficult time for many people, so let’s be mindful of how we can help.
Scott with his fellow journalists and podcasters Sarah Diaa and Ed Clowes. Scott taught many of the best journalists in the region how to get to the heart of a story
Nothing lasts forever. And that’s especially true in the region’s media, which has been on its own rollercoaster ride over the past decade and a half. Tomorrow will be a big downer for me, as Scott Shuey leaves the region.
For the few of you out there in the region’s PR scene who don’t know Scott, he was the business editor at Dubai’s English-language Gulf News. He’d been there for over a decade, joining in 2006. During that time, Scott did two remarkable things, given the media landscape in the region. He was able to break and report news stories that’d make any paper proud. And he also trained many of the best journalists around in the region today. Reporters including Alexander Cornwell (now at Reuters), Sarah Algethami (formerly of Bloomberg), and Ed Clowes (now at the Daily Telegraph) worked under Scott. His current team member Sarah Diaa described Scott to me as “an excellent boss”.
I’ll miss Scott, and what he was trying to do here. I worked closely with him, Ed, and Sarah (both of whom are brilliant journalists in their own right). They pushed new channels before they were popular locally, such as podcasts, and they also pushed the boundaries of what could be reported. For me, there’s nothing better than having to deal with a journalist I respect, and I respected every one who worked with Scott because he showed them how to get to the bottom of a story.
In a region where the media is struggling to deliver original news that isn’t click-bait, Scott and his influence will be sorely missed. For me, it’s the end of an era. Thank you Scott for all the memories, the tough interviews, and for taking to task so many communicators who needed to up their game when dealing with you and your team.
Alex of Arabia's Blog 